Saturday, January 31, 2009

think-big dept.

I am currently listening to an audiobook lecture series by David Christian, a history professor at SDSU. Christian, when he was previously teaching at Macquarie University in Australia, pioneered a course called "Big History". Normally, history courses exclusively navigate the familiar terrain of the past that is embedded in human experience, perpetuated in myth, or transmitted through oral and written records. David Christian's vision is a little larger than that. In Big History, he covers the history of the universe -- starting from the Big Bang, and leading up to the rise of human civilization.
Its a fascinating course -- we may have read about cosmology and physics/chemistry or even anthropology and human history in bits and pieces before, but listening to it unfold like a sequential story is a very different experience.
Highly recommended, and available here.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

so does it compares with the mythological stories in india?

W0lf said...

well, its interesting that David Christian does mention verses in the Rigveda as an illustration of how myth sometimes correlates with what the modern view of the origins of the universe is.
If you remember the theme music/verses of the TV serial "Discovery of India" -- those were the verses he quoted.

Anonymous said...

if you are mentioning this: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vBbSbCczYeM
then hearing it i just rememberd that sanskrit has words for so many things/stuff which other languages lack.. the best exanmple i can think of is the word "awkash",in it we not only take time but also space into consideration. anyways sorry it is off topic here..
Also if you have time do write the summary when u finish going through the lectures..
thanks

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